Registration procedure

There are various registration procedures, each with different technical and legal aspects that must be observed in legally compliant email marketing.

The three most important procedures that can be automated are:

• Single opt-In
• Confirmed opt-In
• Double opt-in

 

Single opt-in

This is the simplest of the three procedures. The address data transmitted by the sender with the e-mail address is not confirmed. This means that this address data is immediately released for dispatch by the system - without the sender's permission. The single opt-in procedure should therefore only be used if it can be ensured that the applicable law is not violated.

Typical areas of application are:

Sweepstakes: If address data is only used for participation in a competition to determine the winner and inform the winner, no address confirmation procedure is necessary. However, if the data generated by this is to be used for future advertising campaigns, the customer or interested party must explicitly consent to this extended use in the web form. Since third-party entries are easily possible with this procedure, it should not be used for generating advertising addresses.

Standard contact forms: Typical contact forms for customer or support inquiries, for example, where further use for marketing purposes can be excluded.

 

Confirmed opt-In

The transmitted address data with e-mail address also do not have to be confirmed by the sender. However, the sender will - unlike with the single opt-in - be automatically informed by the email marketing system by means of a confirmation email, which contains the possibility of an immediate cancellation. It is recommended to write the text and the unsubscription option in the confirmation email as simply as possible. The text should be limited to clear instructions for the recipient, regardless of whether he or she requested the e-mail personally or whether it was triggered - without his or her knowledge - by a third party.

 

Double opt-in

Consistent permission marketing can only be realized with the help of this procedure. The double opt-in is the sharpest form of address confirmation and is very similar to the confirmed opt-in, but with a small but decisive difference:

The address data with the email address is not released immediately, but the sender must explicitly confirm this in a second step.

Normally, the customer or interested party is sent an automatically generated confirmation mail for this purpose after the transmission of his address data. Only after manual confirmation of this e-mail - e.g. by means of a personalized link (permission link) - does the e-mail marketing system release this address for use in future mailing campaigns. This additional security mechanism is intended to protect customers or prospective customers as well as providers from incorrect entries. The disadvantage of this relatively secure procedure is, however, from a marketing point of view, that customers are often overwhelmed with this or do not take this second registration step for convenience. As a result, some valuable addresses are lost. From a legal point of view it is the safest procedure for both providers and customers.

 

 

Opt-Out (confirmed)

A special case of address confirmation is the opt-out procedure. In this case, it is assumed that address lists already exist in the company and a permission is either not required or is available outside of Evalanche. Profiles with this permission can be used as confirmed profiles. In these cases, proof of permission must always be provided by the party who marked the profiles as opt-out.

Summary

The single opt-in procedure without address confirmation should only be used for mailings within closed user groups. This procedure is usually sufficient for maintaining established customer relationships.

In all other cases, when it comes to email marketing campaigns for products or events, with which companies would like to win prospective customers and new customers, it is not advisable to use double opt-in instead.

 

Unsubscription procedure

Every advertising e-mail sent to recipients should offer them the opportunity to unsubscribe from a current mailing. This is usually done by means of personalized links or unsubscribe mails.

In the first case - the personalized link - an individual URL is inserted into the e-mail, which the customer or interested party can unsubscribe from by clicking on it.

 

As convenient as this procedure is, the following problem may arise:

A newsletter subscriber, who receives his newsletter weekly, forwards it to a second person to point out an interesting article. If this second person now clicks on the unsubscribe link, which is still in the mail, the original newsletter subscriber is thereby - without his knowledge - unsubscribed from the email marketing system again. To avoid this problem, the system could send another confirmation mail after the unsubscription, which is only sent to the original subscriber. This would prevent such unintentional unsubscriptions by third parties.

 

The three main procedures are:

• Single Opt-Out
• Confirmed Opt-Out
• Double opt-out

Single opt-out

Sign off procedure from a distributor; counterpart to the single opt-in. Most providers rely on this procedure. Unsubscription from a distribution list is not confirmed by mail. This procedure is recommended by us.

 

Confirmed opt-out

Sign off procedure from a distributor; counterpart to the confirmed opt-in. Unsubscription from a distribution list is confirmed by a mail. The providers usually integrate a link to resubscribe into this confirmation mail.

Double opt-out

It is also possible to use double opt-out. In the confirmation mail you can advertise the further purchase of the information. (Attention! So far this is a legal grey area, since the unsubscriber has already objected to further advertising, pure product advertising is not permitted. A justification why the recipient should not unsubscribe from the list must therefore not constitute direct advertising).